Real
by cardiogod
Summary: I need to know what's real, Cuddy." Missing scene for 5x24.


Title: Real

Author: cardiogod

Rating: PG

Pairing: House/Cuddy

Genre: Angst, romance

Spoilers: 5x23 and 5x24.

Summary: "I need to know what's real, Cuddy."

Author's Note: Unbetaed, middle of the night, probably incoherent, but I couldn't help myself. Still trying to process the finale, and I came up with this little drabble. Please forgive any typos or other spelling/grammatical errors. This is also the first time I've really written angst or dialogue between these two, so my apologies if I've gotten it wrong. I suspect there may be a moment of OOC-ness on House's part (you'll know it when you see it), but I hope it isn't too incongruous.

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They stand together in his bedroom. Wilson is in the driveway, on the phone with the facility, finalizing the arrangements, and she has gone inside to help pack some things. It goes unacknowledged, but they both know it will be a while before he will be back here in his dingy haven.

He doesn't speak, he doesn't look at her, he doesn't move, just stands there in the doorway, looking at the room with empty eyes and a brokenness on his face that she has never seen before, not after the infarction, not after Stacy, not after the failure of the Ketamine, not ever. She stands with him for a moment in solidarity before moving to his dresser and gingerly pulling out a couple of T-shirts, a couple of pairs of pants, some underwear.

She sees him hobble to the edge of his unmade bed and sit gingerly on the corner, his left hand caressing the tangled sheet that lay beside him and she knows that it is happening again, that he is reliving whatever it was that brought him to raise his eyes to hers in her office and tell her through barely-held-back tears that he wasn't okay. Her heart swells for the hundredth time in the space of the last two hours and she puts down the piece of cotton in her hands and sits next to him, feeling the mattress give under their combined weight.

"You were here." His voice is soft, as though he isn't sure he's even speaking, and he doesn't look at her but increases his attention on the sheet between his fingers. She isn't sure if he means in his house or in his bed or in his mind, but she doesn't ask for an explanation, not sure if she really wants to know the answer.

"You were here," he repeats, his voice hitching and his hand balling into a fist, clutching the bedding, desperate to hold on to something, anything. She reaches for him, his pain burning through her like too much whiskey or bad acid reflux, and she wraps both of her hands around his.

"Hold my hand," she says, pulling their locked fingers and whitening knuckles onto her thigh.

His head snaps up, his eyes wild and frightened and searching hers for answers that she can't give, not because she doesn't want to, but because she doesn't have them. She has a moment where she wonders if he's broken all of her bones, his grip is so tight, but she pushes the thought from her mind and holds him with equal ferocity.

"Are you here?"

It isn't the first time he's asked her that since the scene in her office. At first she was surprised by it, almost insulted, unsure of what to make of his question. Was he mocking her? Revealing to her her own insignificance? Brushing her off? Asking her to leave?

But after the third time he asked, after she'd brought him to Wilson, she knew that he was asking because he genuinely didn't know, and the hope she'd had that this was all some gigantic practical joke or some small thing that could be fixed with band aids and chicken noodle soup disappeared like so many red lollipops from the jar at the nurses' station.

"I'm here," she reassures him as best she can, still fighting to find words, gestures, anything to let him know that she wasn't going anywhere.

He shakes his head and rips his hand from hers, suddenly standing and angry and pacing as best he could with his limp.

"You were HERE," he says again, forcefully, as though saying it at a louder decibel would make it true, would erase whatever hell he was experiencing and bring him back to the place where she was there and he was safe.

He hurls himself towards the pile of clothing she has laid on his dresser and sends it fluttering to the floor with a sweep of his arm before whipping around to look at her, his focus no longer hazy or obscured by internal turmoil but sharp enough to pin her to her spot on the bed, rendering her unable to rise and run her arm down his bicep the way she wanted to.

"You were here." He points to the spot where he was standing, yelling now.

"And you were there." The doorframe. He takes a step closer to her.

"And there." The hallway. Another step.

"And there." The dresser. He is practically on top of her now, crazed and hurting and so beautifully innocent that she wants to cry.

"Here." And without warning, he swoops down, curling his hand in her hair, bringing her mouth to his, forcing, demanding, bleeding into her all of his pain and his fear. She is surprised by it, taken aback, and her reaction to recoil is immediate and she feels a tinge of sorrow as she pulls away from him because she knows that he wants from her what she can't give, not like this.

He stumbles backwards a step, two, and brings his hand to his mouth, no longer angry or passionate but dissociated and looking right through her.

"It felt the same." His voice is a whisper again, not at all like the anguished cries of moments before. She wonders if it will always be like this, back and forth between extremes and then she remembers how long she's known him and that there never has been a middle ground where House is concerned.

"It should have felt different." He isn't speaking to her, but to himself. She stands and moves in front of him, blocking whatever point on the wall he was staring at. She brings her hand to his face, mimicking her earlier motion, and she brings his eyes down to hers, begging him silently to tell her what was going on, what was in his head, what Amber and Kutner and god knows who else were saying.

"You were here," he said again, "and you kissed me, and we… And it should have felt different."

She nodded, understanding, and ran her thumb along his jawline, tracing the familiar prickle of his stubble and feeling, just for a moment, a twinge of grief at the loss of something that had never existed to begin with.

"I need to know what's real, Cuddy," he tells her, hollow and pleading at the same time.

She does the only thing she can, laces her fingers through his once more, and bring his hand to her mouth, kissing his knuckles gently and carefully. The emotion is heavy and sad and she wonders if anything will ever be as bad as watching him go through this, watching him doubt every step and every word and every image, watching him lose trust in the mind that has served him so well for forty-something years, watching him look at her as though she was likely to disappear at any moment, her presence as tenuous to him as piece of finely woven silk stretched between two trees, likely to break with any brush of the wind.

"Don't come," he squeezes her hand and looks her in the eye. "I can't…"

"I know." She finishes for him, knowing what he's thinking, as she does so much of the time.

"When you get back," she tries to smile, "I'll be here." She points to the spot where she's standing. "And there." To the door frame. "And there." To the hallway. "And there." To the bed. "And here."

She alights a gentle kiss, first on his forehead and then on his lips, before pulling away and picking his suitcase up from the floor, it's light canvas heavier to her than the weightiest metal, filled with shirts and pants and the despair of the man before her, the person she's come to love above all else.

She zips it shut and swivels her head so that he doesn't see the single tear fall from her eye as she turns to escort him from the room.


End file.
